Israeli Politicsupdated 48m ago3 min read
Israeli Election Campaign Turns Personal as AI-Generated Images Target Eisenkot and Netanyahu
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AI-generated images flood social media, fuel personal attacks against Eisenkot and Netanyahu. Final polls show Eisenkot-led bloc ahead of Netanyahu's coalition, but neither reaches majority.
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AI fuels personal attacks
Israeli election campaigns ahead of Tuesday’s vote have turned “personal,” with candidates who lost loved ones in the wars following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack seeing their bereavement dragged into the campaign. AFP said the race has been “Fuelled in part by a boom in AI-generated images flooding social media,” as candidates and activists sought to portray opponents as weak, untrustworthy or damaging for the country. Gadi Eisenkot posted a video on X wishing Benjamin Netanyahu a happy 77th birthday that featured a slate of AI-generated characters including a Hamas member speaking from a tunnel.
Netanyahu’s camp then used AI-generated content against Eisenkot, including a July video depicting Eisenkot rejecting a hug from a young man wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Israel unity,” a clip that sparked outrage over claims the young man had been made to resemble Eisenkot’s son who was killed fighting in Gaza in 2023. Thair Abu Ras, head of the Forum for Regional Thinking at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, said, “It’s incitement, especially from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s camp,” in comments carried by AFP.
Polls and seat math
Final polls before Election Day showed Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc leading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition by “a lead of two to six Knesset seats,” while none of the blocs projected winning the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Channel 12’s poll projected the Eisenkot bloc winning 56 seats compared with 50 for the Netanyahu bloc, while Channel 13’s poll put the blocs at 54 and 50 seats respectively. Kan public television showed the Eisenkot bloc with 52 seats, compared with 50 for the Netanyahu bloc, and all three polls showed Eisenkot’s Yashar party leading with 22 seats in Channel 13’s and Kan’s polls and 23 in Channel 12’s poll.
Netanyahu’s Likud was second-largest in the polls, with 21 seats in Channel 12’s poll, 20 in Kan’s poll and 19 in Channel 13’s poll, while Channel 13 projected the Joint List receiving nine seats together. The polls also projected far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party receiving eight seats in Netanyahu’s coalition, and the AFP-linked campaign context framed the race as close-fought with Netanyahu’s bloc “neck and neck” with Eisenkot’s ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Security, youth, and stakes
The election has been the first since Hamas’s October 2023 attack, and AFP described how some candidates who lost loved ones in the wars that followed faced personal attacks that dragged bereavement into the campaign.
Al Jazeera said the Israeli Central Elections Committee reported that more than half a million voters were added to the roll since the last elections in 2022, with voters aged between 18 and 22, and it said polls showed 80 percent of them plan to vote in the October 27 legislative election.
Al Jazeera also reported that a poll for Israel’s Channel 12 found around three quarters of Jewish first-time voters polled identified as “right or centre-right,” and it said that significantly higher share than the rest of the Israeli population.
In the West Bank debate, Times of Israel quoted Prof. Gideon Rahat saying, “Objectively, this is just not the main issue in this election,” as divisions focused on the future character of the state and security rather than peace with Palestinians.
Rahat told JTA that Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilian communities in southern Israel and at a music festival “had served to harden” even those who previously thought a peaceful solution might be possible, leaving the campaign with “peace” strikingly absent as Israelis prepare to vote on October 27.